The present invention relates to a system for producing text and more particularly to a system for producing text in human readable form from geometric data in mathematical form that partially describes a three dimensional object.
Engineering layout and assembly drawings that depict network systems such as wire cables used for power or signals, plumbing fixtures and pipes, heating, ventilation and air conditioning duct work, aircraft mechanical cabling, pneumatic tubes and the like heretofore usually have been generated manually or by rudimentary automation. For the purpose of brevity the word cable is used hereinbelow to represent all such elements appropriate to varied environments, such as, but not limited to, wire for electrical systems, pipes for plumbing systems and tubes for pneumatic systems. Wire, pipe or tube lengths, for example, were conventionally determined or estimated by various methods including measuring string on a mock-up scale or life-sized physical model of a product or of a building or by digitizing engineering drawings. The process of drafting engineering drawings based on this information was also accomplished occasionally by a computer aided design system.
Engineering drawings have heretofore been produced by accumulating technical descriptive data manually and, with the use of computer aided design equipment, by entering such technical information into a database. This database could typically be a file of two dimensional mechanical design models of engineering drawings. Such a database did not include provisions for entering, storing or displaying textual information relating to the geometry except through manual methods. That is, once a two or three dimensional drawing was generated, the text would have to be inserted separately either manually or with the aid of a computer.
The aforementioned mock-up scale or life-sized model of a product or building allowed a designer to observe physical properties and make physical measurements of the structures under consideration. These physical measurements were reduced to data that was input to a computer system or hand lettered on the engineering drawings.
When more sophisticated design equipment became available, it became clear that what was needed was a system for entering into a database such data in mathematical form and having the computer system generate the physical data in text form. Once this occurs, the resulting textual description must be placed on the engineering drawings.
The database requires that the mathematical data be a three dimensional representation of the object being designed. This is analogous to the aforementioned physical model also being three dimensional.
It would be advantageous to provide a system for producing text on engineering drawings in human readable form.
It would also be advantageous for such a system to generate physical data in text form from part of a mathematical description of three dimensional objects.
It would also be advantageous for such a system to include two databases: one containing geometric data in mathematical form describing three dimensional objects and the other containing physical data in text form.
Moreover, it would be advantageous for such a system to calculate physical data in mathematical form and convert the results of such calculations to physical data in text form.
It would also be advantageous for such a system to combine physical data in text form, however provided, to produce the complete physical descriptive data in text form that is required by an engineering drawing.